From Mashable
Buying Bitcoin is a Faustian gambit; a real damned if you do, damned if you don’t kind of deal. On the one hand, if you do buy you’re now among the Bitcoin-holding elite and are no longer left out of the modern digital gold rush. On the other hand: What the hell do you do now?Read more: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/9knwnv/the-only-good-bitcoin-advice-is-four-years-old-today-hodl-originFor what it’s worth, I’ve never had to deal with this problem because as a reporter I’ve never invested in cryptocurrencies. But one piece of advice in the Bitcoin community has always stuck out to me as probably being the only way to stay sane once you’ve bought some digital coins that continually shoot upwards in value until they suddenly don’t. That is: HODL.
A misspelling of the word “hold,” chances are that you’ve seen this meme somewhere on the internet if you’ve been following Bitcoin at all. It’s a mantra no matter if Bitcoin’s price is rallying or tanking—don’t sell, hold. As Coin Center’s Neeraj Agrawal pointed out on Twitter Monday morning, the Bitcointalk forum post that started it all is four years old today. Posted by one “GameKyuubi,” the misspelled screed was made in the immediate aftermath of a now-legendary Bitcoin price crash in December of 2013. It was called, “I AM HODLING.”
Simply, HODLing means not selling your coins, even during a dip or a price crash. It’s about playing the long game and not being seduced by the promise of quick money if you spend all day, every day, with your eyes glued to price charts trying to divine the best moment to buy or sell. “It's because I'm a bad trader and I KNOW I'M A BAD TRADER,” Gamekyuubi wrote. “In a zero-sum game such as this, traders can only take your money if you sell.”
Basically, if you’ve bought Bitcoin keep in mind that you are not a banker just because you’re your own bank, and if you thought you’d be really good at day trading penny stocks then you’d be rich already.
I think there is still plenty of good bitcoin advice going around right now that will look like genius in hindsight.
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